Biography
Martha Wainwright entered a musical lineage upon choosing to pursue singing and songwriting, yet she built her reputation independently through candid, articulate, and resolute material rather than trading on familial connections. Her sound merges contemporary folk traditions with exploratory elements, where intricate but spare melodic lines evoke deep feeling, her words deliver perceptive and unflinching self-examination, and her singing pushes vocal boundaries through raw individuality and straightforward delivery. Listeners first encountered her assured fusion of folk and indie rock on the 2008 release Martha Wainwright; she later chronicled a stretch of emotional difficulty on the electronically tinted Come Home to Mama in 2012; and Love Will Be Reborn, issued in 2021 after her marriage dissolved, weighed despair against resilience.
She arrived in Montreal on May 8, 1976, as the daughter of established performers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. From childhood she joined stage and studio sessions, only to lose interest in music as a profession while attending high school. Turning instead toward theater studies at Concordia University in Montreal, she nevertheless soon began writing original pieces and appearing at local clubs and coffeehouses. Her first recording, the cassette Ground Floor, appeared in 1997. Around the same time she joined her brother Rufus Wainwright’s tours as a vocalist and instrumentalist. After relocating to New York she took a role in the stage production Largo, and she issued both a self-titled EP and the four-track Factory in 2002. February 2005 brought the EP Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, reportedly shaped by tensions with her father, followed in April by her debut full-length album Martha Wainwright. Spring 2008 saw the arrival of her next studio effort, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too. A year afterward she presented Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, à Paris, a fifteen-track set of live Édith Piaf interpretations.
Her third studio album, Come Home to Mama, emerged in 2012; tracked at Sean Lennon’s home facility and helmed by Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto, it included contributions from guitarist Nels Cline of Wilco and drummer Jim White of Dirty Three. In 2015 Wainwright joined half-sister Lucy Wainwright Roche to form the Wainwright Sisters, releasing the lullaby collection Songs in the Dark. She revisited the direct emotional style of her initial recordings on 2016’s Goodnight City, which mixed six original compositions with songs co-written by Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, and novelist Michael Ondaatje. After touring extensively through 2017 she returned to Montreal and navigated the dissolution of her marriage. Turning again to songwriting for catharsis, she resumed live performances in 2019, where the new material connected strongly with audiences. Working once more with producer Pierre Marchand, whose past collaborators include Sarah McLachlan and Rufus Wainwright, she tracked her seventh studio album in Montreal; Love Will Be Reborn appeared in August 2021.
She arrived in Montreal on May 8, 1976, as the daughter of established performers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. From childhood she joined stage and studio sessions, only to lose interest in music as a profession while attending high school. Turning instead toward theater studies at Concordia University in Montreal, she nevertheless soon began writing original pieces and appearing at local clubs and coffeehouses. Her first recording, the cassette Ground Floor, appeared in 1997. Around the same time she joined her brother Rufus Wainwright’s tours as a vocalist and instrumentalist. After relocating to New York she took a role in the stage production Largo, and she issued both a self-titled EP and the four-track Factory in 2002. February 2005 brought the EP Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, reportedly shaped by tensions with her father, followed in April by her debut full-length album Martha Wainwright. Spring 2008 saw the arrival of her next studio effort, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too. A year afterward she presented Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, à Paris, a fifteen-track set of live Édith Piaf interpretations.
Her third studio album, Come Home to Mama, emerged in 2012; tracked at Sean Lennon’s home facility and helmed by Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto, it included contributions from guitarist Nels Cline of Wilco and drummer Jim White of Dirty Three. In 2015 Wainwright joined half-sister Lucy Wainwright Roche to form the Wainwright Sisters, releasing the lullaby collection Songs in the Dark. She revisited the direct emotional style of her initial recordings on 2016’s Goodnight City, which mixed six original compositions with songs co-written by Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, and novelist Michael Ondaatje. After touring extensively through 2017 she returned to Montreal and navigated the dissolution of her marriage. Turning again to songwriting for catharsis, she resumed live performances in 2019, where the new material connected strongly with audiences. Working once more with producer Pierre Marchand, whose past collaborators include Sarah McLachlan and Rufus Wainwright, she tracked her seventh studio album in Montreal; Love Will Be Reborn appeared in August 2021.
Albums
Goodnight City
2016
Come Home to Mama
2012
I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
2008
Martha Wainwright
2005
Singles
